


Patchwork of Memory

by gabolange



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-12
Updated: 2011-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:47:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raised by the women who are stronger than you know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patchwork of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in April 2007.

A week ago, Billy had scalded his index finger on the stove, and now he rubbed at the scar with his thumb. It stung, and he wished it hurt more. He might have reason to cry.

His sisters and mother had insisted that they get together before his big day, and had descended on his little apartment with smiles and boxes of food. None of them could cook very well, but staying in with the family all crammed into his studio apartment meant any disasters would stay in the family and any bad jokes wouldn’t get his sister Beth thrown out by her collar. She was the middle child, that one, and had wiggled out of more bar fights and failing grades than he could count; his mother said he got his wry smile from her. His father hadn’t tolerated Beth’s behavior, he had preferred Maria and her quiet intellectualism, and had let his son grow up tagging after his good sister and learning dirty jokes from his bad one.

And so, with his mother chopping vegetables beside him in the galley kitchen and his sisters cracking eggs on the table in the living room—the only other room Billy had—Billy had put water onto boil. He turned too fast to laugh at a joke that, for the life of him, he couldn't remember now and bumped the pot with the tip of his finger. He probably looked a fright when he emerged from the kitchen into the living room with wild eyes and his hand jammed into his mouth.

But his sisters, both wise to his clumsy ways, had hugged him roughly while rolling their eyes, and his mother had promptly fetched ice from the freezer before sitting him down in his one comfortable chair in his one comfortable room, all the while encouraging him to let her finish up. The dinner had gone surprisingly well, though the vegetables were coarse and he hadn't been able to identify dessert: some misshapen, though tasty, chocolate thing. Beth had them laughing until tears sprang from their eyes at the latest gossip from her boyfriend, who worked in Caprica City and swore up and down that the president was having an affair, and that the girlfriend, whoever she was, wore silk stockings and high heels to cabinet meetings, and Maria had them laughing more with her prim denials and snorting incredulity.

Late, he hugged them goodbye from his very first home and told them he'd call from his very first real job, which would take him on his very first space flight. It was a nice job, too, though one he wasn't entirely sure he was ready for. When he'd applied, still finishing up his university degree, he'd figured that if he got it, he would be assigned to make photocopies for some minor functionary in the Department of Justice, or at the very best, get coffee for the Second Deputy Secretary of the Interior. At what they were paying him, getting coffee was all he could hope for. Except he landed the spot as the assistant to the Secretary of Education, and he had exactly no idea what that entailed. He figured photocopies and coffee might figure in somewhere, but he couldn't quite decide where.

He was shocked to know that it entailed accompanying her to the decommissioning ceremony for the old warhorse battlestar, Galactica. He'd heard the stories of the first Cylon war, and had worked quickly and, he hoped, competently, to compile dossiers on the ship's crew. The dossiers were good, he thought, with a good mix of history that he figured the Secretary of Education must surely know already and information that he figured she probably didn't care about. Commissioning dates, major battles, quirks. It sounded like the commander was stuck in the past, the executive officer was a wash out, and the . . . he didn't even know what half the terms meant. But it was his first assignment, and it didn't really matter that he didn’t know, or that he found the old ship rather fascinating with all its nooks and crannies and historical secrets.

Except that now, as he rubbed at the tender flesh of his finger, it did matter. It mattered that the commander was stuck in the past, because it had saved their collective asses. It mattered that he had compiled that information for the Secretary of Education, and that she had read it, because now she was the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and she would need it. It mattered that the dossiers were good, and that he had disabused himself of the notion that he would be making photocopies and getting coffee. He was fairly sure that there were no longer any photocopiers anywhere.

It mattered that his finger refused to throb, refused to give him reason to throw back his head and scream in pain. He wanted to remember what, exactly, his sisters had been trying to make him for dessert, to celebrate his first (and last) real job and his very first (and very last) space flight. It had been chocolate, with eggs, and he wondered if, in this new post-apocalyptic world, he would ever have chocolate again. He wondered if fresh vegetables, badly chopped or otherwise, were a thing of the past.

His family was dead. Gods, everybody's family was dead. To cry over loss when your job isn't photocopies or dossiers but supporting the President of the Colonies and when everyone else was hunkering down and doing what they need to do seemed petty, or stupid, or childish. But he couldn't remember what the joke had been, and he wondered if, soon enough, he wouldn't remember what Maria’s laughter had sounded like, or what his mother's gentle touch had felt like. He wondered if anything mattered at all, when it hurt to breathe because the girls who’d guided you into something like adulthood, and who had made you dessert to celebrate your first real anything were nothing but space dust, nothing but figments of imagination gone terribly wrong.

He remembered the first time Beth had gotten sent home from school. He was four, then, still home wreaking havoc before the world made him wide-eyed. His mother had carried him into the elementary school office, where his eight-year-old sister sat with her jaw set, glaring at the principal. The principal had handed her over rather forcefully, yanking his sister by the arm from her stiff-backed chair and putting her small hand into his mother’s. They hadn’t talked much on the ride home, but as he sat strapped into his booster seat next to his sister in the hovercar, she leaned over and whispered in his ear, “They don’t know as much as they think they do.” The look on Beth’s face, which would later herald eviction from two high schools and earn him unsure glances all through junior high when they heard he was her little brother, was one he grew to know as supreme confidence and utter certainty that the system was wrong.

It was a smile he wouldn’t have to remember, because he’d seen it on Laura Roslin’s face for a split second when relief overcame terror, when she realized the power she now wielded. The president had relaxed, for just a moment, and forgotten that she was sick and frightened and overwhelmed and thought about being in charge of a civilization on the brink. The possibilities flashed through her mind, and he saw it, and saw Beth, and was both reassured and terrified.

But he didn’t want to see that smile on anyone’s face but his sister’s. He didn’t know if he wanted to know the Laura Roslin he’d seen in that smile; Beth had been his subversive but lovable sister and the relation made the difference. Laura Roslin had more mettle in her, he figured, and wherever those carefully-hidden thoughts led her would create more difficulty than Beth ever had.

Billy adjusted in his seat. The space ship, which now ran under the call sign Colonial One, hadn't been designed for permanent habitation, and the two chairs that were now his bedroom and dressing area and private space hadn't been designed for tall people. He shifted and leaned against the window, drawing his knees up. He imagined the awkward position made him look even younger than he was, and he remembered himself at ten, at eighteen, dreaming of space and service and dedication to the cause.

The cause, it seemed now, was to live another day. The president, in moments that reminded him of his other sister, the good one, the academic one, believed that they could create government and community and law and order. He didn’t know if he could bring himself to give that much, to have Beth and Maria warring inside him and not scream for mercy because, Gods, his family was dead and here was Laura Roslin and she was everything he admired and everything he wanted to be and he hated himself for wanting to cry and bleed and be dead back there with the women who were his family when what he’d been dreaming of was right here in front of him.

He squeezed the blister on his finger, and it pulsed under the pressure. It would heal, tomorrow or the next day, and with it would go his sisters' laughter and his mother's touch. Vegetables and chocolate and coffee and photocopiers on Caprica, and he would be left in two seats on Colonial One, working with the president to maintain law and order, to bring comfort and routine to the survivors of the Twelve Colonies. But here he was, and Gods, everyone was dead and there would never be bad jokes about the president’s paramours, and his frakking finger didn’t hurt nearly as much as he wanted to.

Easier to remember, easier to forget.

Billy took a deep breath, and stood from his uncomfortable seat, ducking his head a little to avoid clocking himself on the bulkhead. The president was nowhere to be found, and he jammed his hands into his coat pocket before wandering back toward her hastily-designated space to see if there was anything he could do to help. Law, order, maintaining his sanity by doing anything. His finger stung, and he bit his lip against the pain before calling out, "Madame President?"


End file.
